There she was, sitting at the chemist's counter. The end of another long day. Twelve hours of people in varying stages of disease and hypochondria. Coughing in your face. Touching the counter with their fingers. Mumbling, rambling, stumbling, and scrambling, all day long. But just when I would expect that face to become no bitterer, it did.An expression of such utter revulsion, disgust and outrage, the likes of which I had never ever seen before, or even heard of anyone being subjected to, spread across her face in a slow flush of incredulity.

There was a moment.

Then, the cold struck. A thousand years of entombment in the icy tundra of the Siberian wastes could not have carried a greater chill than that glare. And a thousand gongs from Mortal Kombat could not have clashed out a silence more eloquent and more deafening.

All she had said was, "What do you want?"All I had said was, "A ten-pack of superthins, please."